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Kurt Cobains Top 50 Albums

1. The Stooges

2. Pixies – Surfer Rosa

Kurt says: A die-cast metal fossil of misplaced draft, with or without the fucking production. Everyone who has ever commented on ‘Surfer Rosa’ has said that the production’s amazing. I agree with that, but the songs are so strong that it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d listened to it through a boom-box.

I was completely nihilistic up until about four or five years ago, when I first heard this. It changed my attitude. It made me finally admit, after being into punk rock for so many years, that I finally liked other stiles as well. It made me finally admit that I’m a music lover. Their music reminded me of the music that I always wanted to do – and was doing – before I got into punk rock eight or nine years ago.

3. The Breeders

4. The Vaselines Son Of A Gun

Kurt says: I just have this feeling Eugene and Frances had a really cool relationship. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I think it’s a really amazing thing when a couple can get on together and write some of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. They’re kind of sharing their life with people. Eugene and Frances are the Captain & Tennille of the underground.

5. The Shaggs – Philosophy Of The World

Kurt says: It’s so obviously the real thing. I heard this one live song – a Carpenters song, maybe? – where they must have been playing a day centre, and the screams in the background are louder than the music. The Shaggs are another archetypal K band.

6. Fang – Landshark

7. MDC – Millions Of Dead Cops

8. Scratch Acid – Scratch Acid

9. Saccharine Trust – Paganicons

10. Butthole Surfers – Pee Pee The Sailor

11. Black Flag – My War

12. Bad Brains – Rock For Light

13. Gang Of Four – Entertainment

14. Sex Pistols – Never Mind The Bollocks

Kurt says: A million times more important than The Clash. How do I explain that? Hmm. Both were always a bad imitation of The Rolling Stones, in love with America. But at least they took their girlfriends on tour with them (The Slits). Their music was terrible, though. I blame Sandinista! for not letting me get into punk until years after I should have done – it was so bad.

The Pistols’ album has the best production of any rock record I’ve ever heard. It’s totally in-your-face and compressed. All the hype The Sex Pistols had was totally deserved – they deserved everything they got. Johnny Rotten was the one I identified with, he was the sensitive one. The only reason I might agree with people calling our band “The Sex Pistols of the 90’s” is that, for both bands, the music is a very natural thing, very sincere. But in terms of influence, fuck, no! Rock is too exhausted for that. We haven’t produced a totally original sound like that. We might be uncompromising, but that’s about it. We’re an obvious metamorphosis.

15.The Frogs – It’s Only Right And Natural

16. PJ Harvey – Dry

17. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation

18. The Knack – Get The Knack

19. The Saints – Know Your Product

20. Kleenex – Kleenex/Liliput

21. The Raincoats – The Raincoats

22. Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth

Kurt Says: The music relaxes you, it’s total atmospherics. It’s just nice, pleasant music. I love it. The drum machine has to have the cheesiest sound ever. We’re going to be on a Young Marble Giants compilation, doing ‘Credit In The Straight World’. I had a crush on the singer for a while – didn’t everyone? I didn’t know much about them – the Moxham brothers, right? I heard they might be getting back together again recently. Isn’t it weird how, when you hear something like that, you still get excited, even though you know you shouldn’.

23. Aerosmith – Rocks

24. Various – What is it?

25. R.E.M. – Green

26. Shonen Knife – Burning Farm

Kurt says: This was the first cassette that came out on K. Eventually, after a week of listening to it every day, I started crying. That’s how much it affected me. I just couldn’t believe that three people from a totally different culture could write songs as good as those, because I’d never heard any other Japanese music or artist who ever came up with anything good.

Everything about them is just so fucking endearing. They’re not too cute! That’s part of the charm. Do I think there’s a paedophiliac element to their appeal? I think in Japanese culture in general there’s a paedophiliac element – most of the women there dress op as young girls. It’s weird.

I’m sure that I was twice as nervous to meet them as they were to meet us. I didn’t want to offend or scare them in any way, because I know I’m a scruffy, slimy person who might scare them off – and that’s exactly what I did. They were afraid of me. In fact, on one of our first dates together, they saw me walking towards them and they screamed at the top of their voices, turned around and ran away, and then peeked their heads out of their dressing room. I was trying to reassure them that I was harmless. The communication we had with them was deathly silence and a lot of smiling. In many ways, they’re the ultimate K band, because they are sincere, they are real. They don’t’ purposely put their guitars out of tune and they don’t purposely sing out of tune.

27. The Slits – Typical Girls

28. The Clash – Combat Rock

29. Void/Faith/Split EP

30. Rites Of Spring – Rites Of Spring

31. Beat Happening – Jamboree

32. Tales Of Terror – Tales Of Terror

33. Leadbelly – Last Sessions Volume 1

Kurt says: William Burroughs turned me onto that guy. He said that if you want to hear true honest music, you should hear Leadbelly. The songs are just amazing heartfelt. Leadbelly was this poor black man in the early 1900s who went to jail a few times for wife-beating and robbery and getting into fights and bootlegging liquor. While he was is in prison, he started playing the guitar, and he sang so well that the governor started to like him, and let him out of jail. Leadbelly became an apprentice with Blind Lemon Jefferson and started recording songs, but none of the commercial recordings he made ever captured his true essence, except for these late sessions. They happened when this guy who’d been following his career for a few years caught him on a two-track tape recorder one night when they were hanging out at this hotel. It’s just really cool.

I hope that my songs approximate that honesty. That’s what I strive for. He was like the first punk rocker: he’d get into town, walk into an all-white bar, try to have a drink, get beat up and then go to jail because of it. So it’s really cool to hear this music, especially the air of the recordings themselves, because it’s so eerie to hear it on this crackly two-track. But that’s what Folkway records are like – they’re awesome. They even have the entire Watergate tapes available as a 10-album set. I’m gonna get a Folkways tattoo next to my Black Flag tattoo.

34. Mudhoney – Superfuzz Bigmuff

35. Daniel Johnston – Yim Jump Music

36. Flipper – Generic Flipper

37. The Beatles – Meet The Beatles

38. Half Japanese – We Are They Who Ache With Amorous Love.

Kurt says: I like to listen to Jade Fair and Half Japanese with headphones on, walking around shopping malls – in the heart of the American culture. I just think that, if people could hear this music right now, they’d melt, they wouldn’t know what to do, they’d start bouncing off the walls and hyperventilating. So I turn up the music really loud and pretend it’s blasting through the speakers in the mall.

39. Butthole Surfers – Locust Abortion Technician

40. Black Flag – Damaged

41. The Record

42. Flowers Of Romance

43. Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

44. The Marine Girls – Beach Party

45. David Bowie – The Man Who Sold The World

46. The Wipers – Is This Real?

47. The Wipers – Youth Of America

48. The Wipers – Over The Edge

Kurt says: Is This Real? Yes it is. The Wipers released maybe four or five albums. The first two were totally classic and influenced The Melvins and all the other punk rock bands. They’re one of the bands I tried to assimilate. Their songs were so good. Greg Sage was pretty much the romantic, quiet, visionary kind of guy. What more can I say about them? They started Seattle grunge rock in Portland, 1977.